Person, Place, Poem

Person, Place, Poem is a six-week online workshop in poetry. Those new to poetry will learn some craft and generate some poems, while experienced poets will pick up a few new tricks and work a few muscles. Along the way we'll look at previously published work by a range of contemporary poets, which might include Kim Addonizio, Mahogany Browne, Nick Flynn, Jason Koo, Terrance Hayes, Dorianne Laux, others, along with poetry from around the globe, across the spectrum, and/or in the “canon.” We’ll consider setting, persona, voice, music, truth, image, presence, the line, and forms (sonnet, haiku, the abecedarian, odes, free verse). Each week, participants are given optional exercises to try and to post; the group offers feedback, and the instructor offers substantive critique*. By the end of the sessions, each participant will have attempted at least a dozen exercises, and generated at least a half-dozen drafts of new poems.

Tim Tomlinson is the author of Requiem for the Tree Fort I Set on Fire, about which poet/critic Robert Kramer wrote: “…the overall tone [is] sparse, restrained, laconic, hard-boiled, skeptical, ironic. Even in the portrayal of what would seem to be deeply emotional situations, an atmosphere of ‘cool’ prevails” (American Book Review, Jan/Feb 2017). Tomlinson is also the author of This Is Not Happening to You, a collection of short fiction (due Sept 2017), Yolanda: An Oral History in Verse, and co-author of The Portable MFA in Creative Writing. His work has been published in Australia, China, India, the Philippines, Singapore, and throughout the US, and is anthologized in We Contain Multitudes: Twelve Years of Softblow, The Brooklyn Poets Anthology, Eternal Snow, and in the forthcoming Lofi Poetry Poets Responding to the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. He is a co-founder of New York Writers Workshop, and a professor in New York University’s Global Liberal Studies Program.